Last week we had our local Regional with 30 players.
I went with a list that has served me well in the past:
Talonbane Cobra (28)
Crack Shot (1)
Homing Missiles (5)
Glitterstim (2)
Guidance Chips (0)
N'Dru Suhlak (17)
Crack Shot (1)
Cluster Missiles (4)
Glitterstim (2)
Guidance Chips (0)
Manaroo (27)
Deadeye (1)
Proton Torpedoes (4)
Extra Munitions (2)
Boba Fett (1)
R4 Agromech (2)
Feedback Array (2)
Guidance Chips (0)
Total: 99
You will find my preparation and thoughts on the list and how I performed with a previous version of it here
Round 1 – BYE. I won the local SC. So I could start with a break.
Round 2 – against Timon with RAC with VI and Darth Vader (Crew) + Oicunn with Predator, Anti-Pursuit Lasers and Mara Jade. A good local player who I faced before, so I knew I had to be carefull.
Hmm… 2 Decimators, scary but not too bad for me. I should be able to eat through the first pretty fast. My opponent set his Decimators opposite from NDru. Manaroo and Talonbane entered the fight from the right side. First combat phase my opponent could only get 2 damage on NDRu with RAC and Vadered for a Crit. No Direct Hit so NDrus Rocket could eat through Oicunn. Talonbanes Missile and the Torpedo from Manaroo almost killed Oicunn and a Blinded Pilot ensured that he couldn’t shoot back. RAC finished NDru next turn and Talonbane killed Oicunn. Talonbane and Manaroo went for the hunt for RAC and made short work of him. With his last breath, RAC Vadered Talonbane to death. It was the best my opponent could do. RAC was on his last hull and facing a range 1 shot from Talonbane. So he took him with him to the grave for MOV.
WIN, 100-60
Round 3 – against Kurt with 2 Jumpmasters and a Bumpmaster. Another good player and great guy. I was happy to finally be able to play against him, but was not happy at all to play against his list.
I screwed up the approach. I went for the Bumpmaster who I thought was one of the Boats with Torpedo. I only realized my mistake when NDru set his Target Lock. Kurt was easy about it and let me switch the Lock, but concerning the situation as a whole it was best to shoot him as Talonbane would probably be too far away to get a clear shot on one of the other Jumpmasters. My guys killed the Bumpmaster in one round but the return fire from the U-Boats was bad: 2 Proton Torpedoes got 8 hits/crits on Manaroo (so far so good, that’s quite probable). But 4 green dice failed to show a single Evade. And the crit was a Direct Hit. BOOM! There went Manaroo and my hope to win the game.
Next turn I had to decide which of 2 options one of the Scouts would take (the other Scout would definitely do a Segnor, nothing I could do about it). I chose the less obvious and turned my ships in this direction. I guessed right! The Jumpmaster blocked the path for my ships had I chosen the other option. Now my ships stared directly at the Scout at Range 1. Only when the 5 dice from Talonbane showed 2 hits and 2 Eyes did I realize that I should have used Glitterstim! Because of that I failed to kill the Scout this round and got some return fire. And that was the end of it. In the end I killed the Scout and reduced the other to 4 hull but it was not meant to be. I lost a game that I thought I couldn’t win just because of my mistakes. At least I got good MOV.
LOSS 82-100
Round 4 - against Patrick with Biggs, Lt. Blount (Ion Pulse), Sabine with Autoblaster, PtL , Intelligence Agent and Stresshog. It’s always a pleasure to play with Patrick. On top of that the list was good for me. So I was happy with the Pairing.
Patrick set his Team close together on his right side. I placed NDru facing his team and the other ships in the middle. Second turn he shot forward with Sabine and NDru cleared his maneuver by the closest gap possible. Talonbanes Missile one-shotted Sabine while NDru and Manaroo killed Biggs with their ordnance. NDru got some damage and tried to flee next turn on his last hull but a Ion Pulse Missile from Blount took him to the grave. Now here’s the funny thing: I had the game in the sack. A Y-Wing and a Z95 against full health Talonbane and Manaroo… easy! Talonbane took his drugs to get some work done on the Stresshog. While the TLT shots in the return fire couldn’t connect, the primary shot got a crit through. Now Talonbane had his Console on fire and was sitting on 4 Stress! Together with Manaroo he tried to hunt Blount and the only exciting thing of the game was to see if Talonbane would explode or if I could win in time. The next 2 turns he rolled hits and went to his last hull. The next 2 turns however he got lucky and kept the Console Fire under Control. On top of that he flew over an Asteroid without exploding and stayed alive to see the Victory of Manaroo.
WIN 100 – 24
Round 5 against Fabien with Miranda TLT, 2 Gold TLTs and a Bandit. Another good player and nice guy. The matchup was quite ok for me I guessed.
I honestly don’t remember much about this game. Only that my ships did a lot of damage but the Y-Wings survived just a tad too long. One Y-Wing stayed on his last hull for a bit and the other evaded more than he should have. This made the game closer than was necessary. In the end Manaroo hunted Miranda and Boba got rid of the TLT so Miranda couldn’t regenerate that easily and still do 2 damage a turn. Manaroo got down to 4 hull but did enough damage with R4 to secure the victory.
WIN 100 – 79
I was standing at 4-1 with a MOV of 719 in 2nd place and was in the cut.
Semi-Final: Rematch against Timon with 2 Decimators.
I knew that my opponent wanted to go for NDru and kill him before he could shoot the Cluster Missiles. So I approached carefully. This worked well as NDru lived a couple of rounds. However I couldn’t chew through Oicunn fast enough, during the opening phase my red dice were just not delivering enough punch. Admittedly the green dice were rather good but I would have preferred the other way around as I just needed one Decimator gone as soon as possible. The turn Oicunn finally died, Talonbane AND NDru both went to the grave as well. Next turn Manaroo got a crit with the last Torpedo on RAC, setting his Pilot skill to 0. I decided to use Boba to get rid of Vader. RAC was on 4 hull and Manaroo lost all the shields. So 5 hull against 4 and Manaroo shot first. That seemed doable. The next fire was exchanged at range 1. Manaroo got 3 hits and RAC was on his last hull. The return fire was 3 hits and a crit! Ouch! Fortunately no Direct Hit. My opponent asked what would have happened if he would have used Vader now. I told him that he would have won because he had Initiative. I laughed and asked what he thought why I got rid of Vader :-)
So we went to the next round. I fired at range 3 and got only a blank and an Eye. The Focus turned the Eye to a Hit and the Target Lock from R4 only got me another Blank. RAC rolled an Eye and used his Focus to survive. That was a 82% chance to win the game right on the spot. But it was not meant to be: Manaroo got killed in the return fire.
LOSS 75 – 100
Final thoughts: While I could have won both matches I lost, I was pretty happy with the overall result
I was definitely lucky to not face any Palp Aces and only one U-Boat list. But I still think my list is more than ok in the current meta. I liked how I could surprise my opponents with a damage burst. Another good trait of my list was that my matches were very fast. I think in the longest match there were still 18 left on the clock. This was very important for me because I could clear my head, drink and eat something between rounds.
I had great opponents and good matches. So all in all it was a very successful day. And on top I got the dice I hoped for!
Thanks for reading!
